The wireless router market has traditionally been occupied by Linksys and Netgear. These two companies make some of the best wireless routers that appear in the market today. Belkin has also recently become a big player- especially in the high speed consumer wireless router market and has some of the best home routers of 2013 offering for speed critical applications like video streaming and gaming.

The biggest categorization of wireless routers appear with respect to the wireless standards that they support. The LAN standards go by the name of 802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g and 802.11n. This is also the order in which these standards launched. The later ones are faster and also more expensive. So 802.11n is faster than 802.11g which is faster than 802.11a which is again faster than 802.11b (802.11b did indeed come before 802.11a). The best routers of 2013 will most likely be the 802.11n routers because they support the highest transfer rates. However it should be noted that the 802.11n standard is not supported by a vast majority of devices currently so may not be the best investment for 2013. For the best routers in 2013 you can safely stick to the 802.11g versions also because for most typical application excluding very high speed gaming, the older versions are good enough. And if you have a budget constraint, you could also check out our list of best budget wireless routers.

Check out our list of best wireless routers, top rated by some of the best reviewers of wireless routers.